A remembrance of Don Seeley

People who know me will be quick to tell you I’m not a warm and fuzzy kind of guy.

In fact, most people know me as a person who seldom cares or gets too sentimental about anything or anyone. And I’m not likely to offer too many favors.

But I would have laid down in traffic for Don.

He was a friend, a mate, a hero, a confidant and the only person with whom I actually looked forward to covering a sporting event. And man, could he make me laugh.

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No matter how wretched the game we stood in front of, no matter the weather conditions, no matter the stupidity of the persons in charge of the event, if Don were there, I’d gladly be there, too — with bells on.

I can’t recall our first meeting, but I’m sure it was sharing a sideline at a sporting event.

Back in those wonderful days, local newspapers, at least those in this neck of the woods, were at the top of their game in terms of personnel and popularity, and the Herald and the Mercury were two of this area’s best.

Keep in mind, this was before the internet exploded, before any knucklehead with a handheld device could inaccurately “report” on an event and have thousands of other knuckleheads believe each and every word was true.

In those times, the only way the followers of local sports could read about their alma mater or their son’s Legion team or their daughter’s summer softball team was by picking up the local newspaper.

It was also a time when nearly all of the local area’s newspapers were independently owned, so when a football game took place between Perkiomen Valley and Hatboro-Horsham, for example, you could realistically have reporters from five or six different newspapers, plus more, tripping over each other on the sidelines while attempting to stat the game.

It is in the keeping of statistics that I first became aware of Don as someone more than just another face keeping notes in front of an athletic event. First of all, he made walking the sidelines fun. From checking out women, to busting on coaches and officials — and done with a real flair for flatulence — he truly was a gas (pun intended). Like me, Don relished stats, knew of their importance to the reader and treated them much like I did — as something sacred, as something that was nearly as important as the story.

If it’s possible to love stats, Don came close. Covering a baseball game with him meant hearing him bark out, “Agate” at the sight of the first double or error or sacrifice fly. It’s no coincidence that Don’s baseball boxscores were the most thorough around. If possible, the man would actually count spectators, enabling him to include the game’s attendance at the bottom of his baseball box.

That type of attention to detail for what most people would consider nothing more than “a high school game” was, as I look back now, one of the reasons why he was able to maintain such a high level of quality work over the years. Most sportswriters were covering big events or small events and cared accordingly. Instinctively, Don knew that a meaningless regular-season basketball game in the middle of January was the seventh game of the NBA Finals to the young athletes featured or quoted in his story.

He also understood that winning didn’t always mean having your hand raised or being handed a trophy. Sometimes winning was simply having the courage to try. Most reporters surrounded the leading rusher or the winning pitcher after a game, and Don did likewise. But he also took the time afterwards to talk to the young athlete who recovered a fumble in his first varsity game.

Years later, he would save space in his well-read wrestling columns each week for acknowledging positively a local wrestler with a losing record.

I knew the man cared deeply about what he did and the kids he spoke to, and I admired that.

As years passed and the aforementioned internet became the primary tool for disseminating information, the local newspaper gradually diminished in importance to the general public and many of our colleagues in the business moved on to different jobs.

But what Don and I discovered, and what we joked about in recent years, is that we were two dinosaurs in the industry, both too dumb to get out. The truth is, and I know we both knew it, we were lifers. Realistically, through all of the ups and downs, through both the happy times and those that would send us screaming into the night, we just couldn’t see ourselves making a living any other way.

We were cut from the same cloth. I can’t remember how many times we ragged on some writer who had the misfortune of misspelling a name in print or an editor who insisted on sending one of us to cover one event when another was more important to the local readers. In the large scope of the world, those things hardly mattered. To us, it was akin to burning the flag.

To us, this wasn’t just a living; it was something we cared deeply about.

There was one important way, however, that we differed — and I believe we both envied and admired each other for this difference.

A long time ago I made the conscious decision to put my family above my job. I had missed one too many birthdays, school plays and anniversaries. So there would be times when I reined in my enthusiasm and my 12- and 16-hour days in order to spend quality time at home.

If a big local sports story broke, it would either break without me or wait until I got back to work.

I think Don respected that. I know for a fact he adored his two daughters and his grandson, and wished he had spent more time with them.

By the same token, I wished I had put the hours into my work that Don had. I mean, this was a man who authored an entire tabloid section on the end of the Ches-Mont League, taking the exhaustive time of tabulating virtually every school’s record in every sport during its existence. This was a man who put out a wrestling media guide for the Pioneer Athletic Conference in its first few years of existence. This was a man who claimed to have at least three file cabinets full of information in his basement he was going to use to write the definitive book on District One Wrestling.

This was a man who purchased a trophy in his father’s name and donated it to his alma mater, Spring-Ford, to display each season’s baseball player of the year. This was a man who used to write an annual overview of all District One wrestlers and their progress in college (not just those wrestlers from the Mercury coverage area — all of District One). And he kept Mercury football and wrestling statistics, with rankings for both. And he did all of this on his own time.

I used to joke with him about the number of Hall of Fames that made him a member — from the District One Wrestling Hall of Fame to the Pa. American Legion Hall of Fame to the most-recent National Wrestling Hall of Fame, among others.

“Which Hall of Fame this week?” I’d snap. And after a typically vulgar Seeley response, we’d have a laugh about it. But I knew they all meant a lot to him. And when someone would ask if I were jealous, I’d honestly reply that I wasn’t. He’d earned each and every one. And he did it through hours and hours of hard work and more than a few personal sacrifices.

Where Don and I truly became close was through decades of covering scholastic wrestling. Like Don, I never had wrestled and wasn’t exactly thrilled when I was given the wrestling beat almost 30 years ago. But with a long list of helpful coaches and athletes holding our hands along the way we became passionate about the sport. As so many others have said, Don became District One wrestling’s best ambassador. He did so in print by devoting so much of his time and writing talent to its coverage, but also by making sure he spent personal time with his fans and readers.

Going to a wrestling event with Don was sometimes like traveling with Mick Jagger. Every wrestling fan knew him, and it seemed every one of those fans had a tale they needed to tell Don. He listened to every one of those stories with a smile, and added a few of his own in return.

As a person who sometimes prefers to keep his distance, it amazed me how much time Don would devote to the public.

Whether they were parents, former athletes, current athletes and even sportswriters, they would turn around to talk to him while walking through a stadium or a gymnasium and you’d likely wind up talking to a wall while Don was huddling with a group of parents who’d pulled him aside.

And to the athletes in the Pottstown area, he was a god. To be interviewed by “Mr. Seeley” was the highlight of a week, maybe even a season, maybe even a career.

My favorite professional time of year was always early March because that meant I’d get to spend at least a couple of weekends covering regionals and states with Don.

With some exceptions, those early days at states were pretty tough because not only was the District One contingent at states usually weak, but the majority of it was also usually going home after two quick losses on the opening day of action. Then we’d have to sit in a bar in Hershey after that first night and listen to the rest of the state’s reporters have a hearty laugh at the expense of the district.

Don, however would get his giddy revenge years later when wrestlers like Upper Perk’s Brad Rozanski or Pottstown’s Brian Campbell came along. And when schools like Upper Perkiomen, Boyertown and Owen J. Roberts became state powers over the past decade and a half, Don was in his glory.

What I’ll believe to my dying day is that it was Don’s coverage of wrestling in the Pottstown area that sparked the interest that turned many area athletes into those standout wrestlers.

One of his favorite stories was of a friendly run-in he had at states with another wrestling writer, who asked him who this kid “Kwotnik” or “Cortnik” was. This Kwortnik kid, of course, turned out to be North Penn’s Chris Kwortnik, a three-time state champion and the best and most dominant wrestler in the history of District One. With each subsequent trip to the postseason, Don would make sure to write in the name of “Kwortnik” as the winner of every one of his scheduled matches even before the competition began.

Each trip to states, as well as each trip to districts and regionals, would not be complete without Don and I choosing our OW.

OW is the abbreviation given for a wrestling tournament’s Outstanding Wrestler. Don and my OW was the Outstanding Woman, and we’d scan the stands until we found the most stunning female in attendance. We shook our heads in mock shame in recent years over how our OWs had gone from students to older sisters to moms.

The times at states with Don I best remember, however, were our smoke breaks. There’d be a time when neither of us had locals on the mats, and we’d head outside for a cigarette or two. It was rare not to find a handful of other wrestling writers doing the same thing. And many an hour passed with a cross-section of Pa.’s sportswriters gabbing, wisecracking, bitching and laughing over whatever subject came up.

It was a ritual Don and I continued, even after I’d quit smoking, and the venue for state wrestling changed from the old Hersheypark Arena to the Giant Center.

Not surprisingly, while I knew only a few of the sportswriters we would hang out with, Don knew them all and they all knew Don.

It’s no secret the man was a master storyteller, and I wish I’d taken the time to record some of his best ones for posterity.

For the record, my favorite was always about his road trip with Boyertown to the American Legion World Series, held one year in either Fargo, N.D. or Rapid City, S.D. (I forget which), and involving a pair of female roommates in whose house he found himself one evening.

Without going into much sordid detail, the key line in the tale has Don downstairs with one of the roommates while the other, upstairs, asks innocently, “Don, are you coming?”

My favorite line of Don’s came in 1991 when we and a handful of others had the rare displeasure of covering the District One Class AA baseball championship game at West Chester University.

St. Pius X was playing Bishop Shanahan for the district title in temperatures well into the 90s.

Unfortunately, nothing resembling a concession stand existed at or near the field, and the game, a 23-14 Pius victory, lasted better than five hours.

Late in the game, with everyone in the crowd, including sportswriters, about to crumple to the ground from the heat and dehydration, Don quipped, “I’m so thirsty, if somebody p-ssed in a cup I’d pay them $100 for it.”

My least favorite Don story was one he told me about being home alone, in the throes of excruciating agony while battling cancer, and wishing for death. It’s one that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and one I’ve tried in vain to forget.

Since Don’s death he’s been on my mind a lot, and I know I’ll miss him even more when I pick up the phone to call him and realize I can’t.

I’ll miss him when I’m statting a football game and especially when wrestling season comes along and there are no more smoke breaks or OWs.

I’ll miss him when I can’t think of the name of an athlete from long ago and I’m unable to give him a “quick” call that turns into 15 minutes.

I took the news of my friend’s death stoically, but I haven’t been able to talk about it without tears filling my eyes and the words sticking in my throat.

The guy was truly a local legend and the best local sportswriter I’ll ever know. But the man I’ll most remember is the one who made me laugh like few others, the man who always had a kind, although sometimes vulgar, word and the man who was my professional idol.

And for an old, unsentimental coot like me, I can honestly say covering local sports will never be the same.